Pleasure Leftists – The Gate (Independent)
Cleveland’s Pleasure Leftists have
paid their dues. They’ve been around, on and off, for the best part of a decade,
regularly releasing material, and generally mining a rich musical seam that
pays homage to the artists and labels that sprung out of the late ‘70s / early
‘80s post-punk scene, in both the UK and the US.
‘The Gate’ is their first record
since 2015’s ‘The Woods Of Heaven’ (which, together with their latest, can be
found on Bandcamp) and
continues their exploration of a genre that continues to be relevant. The
production is both pinpoint sharp and rhythmically dense, as glassy guitars and Haley Morris’s powerful vocals compete
favourably with a pummeling, no-nonsense rhythm section, enthusiastically
waving their ‘fuck art let’s dance’ banners.
It helps to take a couple songs away from the whole and listen to
them out of context. When isolated in this way ‘The Conversation’ literally
leaps from the speakers – it’s power undeniable. Think a natural merging of
Killing Joke and Skeletal Family in their early primes, and as for ‘Dancing In
The Dark’, it simply oozes aberrant menace, which is fine by me.
Rollo
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